WornOut Tapes full version of Excerpt
by NostalgicForNever
Summary: This is the full version of the earlier-published excerpt. Mulder and Scully stumble across a somewhat paranormal case. I address the romantic element quite a bit - it is generally my favorite subjectmatter.


**Author's Note: **

This is the full story of the earlier published 'Excerpt.'

Thank you so much to all those that read the original fragment, and encouraged me to publish the full text. I would like only to mention that I had originally extracted a section from Excerpt that I re-included in this text since it is necessary to the fully story, but was too distracting in the original sample.

Please feel free to review. I am new to publishing fan-fiction, and have never really shown my writing to anyone, but I welcome any criticism no matter how harsh. Also, forgive me, but I am having difficulty adjusting to the text format this website allows, there might not be page breaks where they should be.

Also, I suppose it is polite to include a **disclaimer** in these cases, so here goes: If you are on the website dedicated to fan fiction, and you feel that I am implying ownership of the creative content of the show X-Files which was written and directed by Chris Carter and which, in 1999, was ranked Fox's highest-rated show, viewed by an estimate of 15.3 million viewers - you need to reappraise your understanding of the media-fan relationship.

**Worn-Out Tapes**

Fox Mulder was sitting on his couch, spastically lit by the chattering television set. It was 1 am, in D.C., in July, and somehow every one of those facts was irritating him in an abnormal way. The window was open, the ashtray by his side was filled with sunflower shells, and a steady bead of sweat was calmly sliding down the middle of his chest. He cracked a seed open between his teeth and brought his thumb and forefinger to his lips, spitting out the shell. He was staring straight ahead at the TV. The flashing pictures weren't making any sense to him anymore, though. He was thinking about Scully.

He couldn't remember when it began, or how it snowballed to such drastic proportions. Somewhere down the line, calling her his partner and friend had become a thin veil over a beast of a feeling that was both love and obsession. He thought about her all the time. He would replay images of her in his mind over and over. He would wear out their clarity, and walk every morning into work hungry for new ones. He treasured everything she did because his memory could only hold onto it for so long.

He did absolutely nothing to satisfy this obsession. He was convinced that if she knew, if she figured it out, if she recoiled and ran, he would be lost.

When they walked through doorways, he brushed his fingertips against her lower back: a gentleman's gesture that had been a habit of his since teenage years. It had never meant anything until her. Mulder drew a sharp breath. If she knew how he felt about her, how his fingertips burned in that moment, she would never allow him to touch her. He would lose the sole scrap of physical contact he had.

The bag of seeds was empty. He stood up, walked to the wastebasket and emptied his ashtray. He opened the cabinet above the kitchen counter and rifled through its contents in the dim light. He threw another bag onto the couch and then walked to the open window, rubbing the back of his neck. July in D.C. was a torturous affair.

* * *

><p>What's this one?'<p>

'Medical...Autopsy results.'

'Oh, from the Bobby file?'

'Yup.'

Mulder slapped a folder down next to his partner and then plopped into a chair across their single desk. He cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth and began to reread a different closed case. That was their schedule for the day: studying old files. The Bobby case wasn't an X-File; it was an case on a serial killer that Mulder helped profile. Scully flipped through the autopsy, and returned to the primary report. She paused and looked at Mulder thoughtfully.

'How did you know?' she asked suddenly.

Mulder looked up.

'When you said the killer wasn't a woman,' she continued. 'You were right. Everyone assumed it was a woman. I would have assumed a woman. How did you know? All the victims were young, attractive males; 'Blame Bobby' scribbled in hot pink lipstick at every scene. And you were the only one who thought it wasn't a woman. Why?'

Mulder spit out a shell. 'There was a case several years ago, where the words 'You did this,' appeared at the crime-scenes. The killer turned out to be young man with a severe speech impediment. He was obsessively reliving a traumatic event from his teenage years, and targeting young women who resembled the homecoming queen of his high school. The team working on the case concluded that he was blaming her. I always thought, however, that the emotion associated with the message 'You did this' was only minimally directed toward the girl. I felt that he blamed the speech impediment that kept him from being able to socialize successfully his whole life. When the Bobby case came along, the similarity struck me. The blame of the crime onto some external entity was unique to both. I was sure that, just like in the first case, the agent of the Bobby killings was blaming not simply one person or incident, but a dominating factor in their own life that continuously caused them hardship. The idea that it wasn't a woman, but a man who felt that he was a woman trapped in man's body, was my best guess.'

Mulder gestured toward the open file in front of Scully, pointing at a photograph of the phrase 'Blame Bobby' scrawled on a mirror.

'I just felt that the lipstick color was too flashy for a woman who was inhibited by something most of her life.'

Scully scoffed with a bit of envy.

'...All that from a boy who couldn't manage to ask a girl to the prom because of an embarrassing stutter?'

Mulder smiled sadly. 'Extremely self-aware and willful individuals are prone to be driven mad when nature denies them happiness.'

* * *

><p>Time in between cases at the FBI was filled with mundane busywork: filling out, sorting, reviewing various forms, and, as a source of respite, studying old case-files. This was day three of the lull. Scully was sitting across from Mulder, having marked her half of their single large desk with three pencils lying end to end in a horizontal line. Neat and fat piles of manila folders reined her territory. One folder lay open and she was softly tapping her fingers on the wood as she read. Across the border lay a chaos of loose files, newspaper clippings, seed shells, and all of the office supplies normally spread out on the desk. Mulder was reading an old paper, his temple resting on his knuckles.<p>

As her fingers drummed against the desk, Scully realized that she was rereading the same section. It was too hot and too boring in the basement. She stole a quick glance at her partner. He was chewing a pencil, eyes buried in the paper. She looked at the row lying on the table. Four pencils would make a longer wall, but why up the defense - Mulder had demonstrated full respect of the boundary. She moved her fingertips toward the three pencils, and began to roll the left one back and forth as she returned her gaze to the file.

Her mind having stumbled across Mulder seemed to have gotten stuck. A small chill ran down the back of her neck. There was something different about her relationship with him lately. She would often tell herself that she was just imagining things, but more and more frequently that same chill slipped like an ice-cube down her back at the thought of him. It was a barely discernible, un-provable difference in the way Mulder acted around her. His jokes that were once so lighthearted recently developed an odd clang of forced merriment. Playful flirtation was no longer thrown about to lighten a grave mood. Most of all, it was the way he touched her lightly on the back. It was a habit of his from the beginning - a polite gesture letting her know she had the right of way - but lately it was something of a chaotic event that she could not endure without her heart freezing for a moment. There was such a weight and possessiveness in the way he pressed his fingertips to her body now. Was his hand lingering each time?

Chilled sweat was breaking on the back of her neck, but she could not stop this doomed train of thought. All her life, her understanding of emotion was outfitted with practicality. She understood loyalty, dedication - all the passions that made her a levelheaded agent. And the effect Mulder was having on her lately was terrifying her. Scully was staring at the same word in the file. She was rolling the yellow wood pencil slightly back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly his hand brushed against hers. Her heart shot into her throat and fell somewhere very far below. She threw a startled, wide look at Mulder, but he wasn't even looking in her direction. His eyes were glued to the paper, his index finger planted on one point of the article. He was simply feeling for a file and missed, accidentally grazing her hand. Scully looked back down, embarrassed and confused, but relieved that he hadn't noticed the reaction his touch had on her. She counted out five seconds, and raised her gaze again, just to make sure.

That was the exact moment it was all over. The thought train crashed, her heart disappeared for good and a thousand ice cubes cascaded down her back. Scully had looked up right into Mulders eyes. He was sitting exactly where he was, the criminal hand holding open the found file, but his eyes were boring into her. They were the darkest dark, and burning like hot metal. She felt as though they were seeing everything - as though at that second she was more naked than if she had been nude. He sat, without moving, without breaking his gaze.

Not knowing how, Scully managed to look back down at the file. The word she had been staring at was now swimming amid the other words and off the page, reappearing in odd locations. Her hands felt like boulders; her heart was pounding violently in her ears.

Scully snapped the folder shut, stood and walked to the coffee maker. She slowly poured from the pot, watching the coffee flow luxuriously, breeding wisps of steam and little golden bubbles on the oil-black surface. Her pulse was steadying; air was becoming more accessible. She drew a long quiet breath and picked up the mug with both hands waiting for it to cool down.

Mulder had not moved. His eyes were locked on her back. His hands were still, his heart was beating steadily, and his mind was blank. All he could hear was his own heartbeat - it was as calm as if he were sleeping. He stood up soundlessly and walked up behind her. He looked curiously down at her auburn hair. He could see the more golden strands entwine with the rich dark ones as they cascaded down. His gaze traveled with them. Her white shirt was wrapping her shoulder-blades and, lower, lower, it was wet and clinging at her lower back. Mulder noticed his own beads of sweat traveling down his chest. He raised his hand slowly and held it millimeters from her body. She was still as a statue. He was sure that she wasn't breathing. He hesitated and, with a sensation like that of being caught in the tide, he ran his knuckles along her lower back.

The mug fell to the floor and shattered. Then the phone rang. Mulder started. Scully bent down like a collapsible tent, quickly gathering the pieces of the mug.

'Damn phone, it must have startled me...' she mumbled breathlessly without looking at him.

Mulder stood frozen a moment and then fully invested in the idea that the next step now was to walk upstairs and throw himself out of the floor-ceiling window in the big office. The phone rang again. He turned mechanically and walked back to his desk. His heart was no longer steady. It didn't seem to plan on ever beating again. Scully was still cleaning the spilled coffee. He raised the receiver.

'...-Yes?'

'Agent Mulder, this is Trudy,' came a nasal matter-of-fact voice, 'Assistant Director Skinner would like to see you and your partner in his office right away, please.'

'Very well.' He did not know how his voice was remaining even. His mind was spinning like some kind of demonic merry-go-round.

He dropped the receiver.

'Skinner wants us.' He said to Scully, marveling at the calmness of his own voice.

She deposited the mug shards into the wastebasket, and, without a word, followed Mulder out of the basement doors.

* * *

><p>The fluorescent light in Skinner's office beamed lovingly on the top of the bald man's head. He was cleaning his glasses with a soft white cloth, and talking in the monotone voice of a management official. Mulder and Scully were sitting in the two chairs in front of his desk.<p>

'As I understand, agents, your department is riding out a small lull. So I believe that the two of you are currently available for a brief reassignment to one of our other divisions. We are swamped and certain agents are on medical leave, which is not making things any easier. After you leave this office, I would like you to report to the fifth floor. Agent Soblasky is heading off a small team engaged in a case involving the possible manufacture of explosive weapons in a region of West Virginia.'

Satisfied with the sparkle of the lenses, he returned the cloth to the case.

'I would like the two of you to help out Soblasky's team. You know,' he capped off as he returned the glasses to their rightful place, 'until things pick up on your end.'

Scully and Mulder nodded their consent.

It was cut and dry. They were handed copies of the file, a car was rented and they were shipped off into the jungles of bootlegging rebels to follow one of the team's many leads. Soblasky was a fifty-some-year-old man with a gentle demeanor and an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the bureau. The trip assigned to Mulder and Scully wasn't one of the more promising leads. He openly explained that a little road-air would be a nice break from paperwork and that they wouldn't find themselves involved in something too complicated. Scully and Mulder found themselves on the road before 3pm. They were headed for Youngstown, West Virginia in an air-conditioned car that was boiling with a weird tension.

Mulder was driving. He was staring straight ahead and trying to organize the weird shreds of thought, scattered about the great wasteland that was now his mind. Every time he pulled something coherent together, the flash of Scully's back in the hot basement burned through him, and a large lump in his throat made it hard to breathe. So Mulder just stared straight ahead.

Unlike Mulder, Scully was trying not to think at all. She sat in the passenger's seat with the case folder in her lap. She had tried to read it at first, but their assignment was routine and uncomplicated. She stared out of the passenger window. She was feeling like somebody hit her on the head. The memory of Mulder's touch kept washing over her, bringing about wilder and wilder fantasies in which his hand pressed harder, moved further... then it wasn't just his hand anymore, his whole body was pressing against her -

Scully violently rubbed her temples. Stop! Stop! Stop-

Mulder glanced sideways, 'Are you - is everything alright, Scully?' he asked, tentatively returning his gaze to the road.

'Oh, yeah,' she answered quickly, not looking at him, 'all this heat is just getting to me, I think.'

Mulder reached over and turned up the blue dial on the dashboard.

'Sorry, it takes a while to cool the whole car down. It was sitting out in the sun probably.'

He paused, chewing his lips a little. He had forgotten his bag of seeds in the basement.

'Anything special about the case?' he asked.

'It's too early to tell. A lot of the leads so far are based on a tip from Huntington. They believe the culprit is operating within the area... '

'Then, why are we going to Youngstown? That place is nowhere near Huntington and has a population of what? Like two point five persons?'

'Minor side lead. Reports of suspicious activities...suspicious purchases...' She was plucking absently at a tiny whiteout stain on the edge of her suit.

Mulder cast another sideways glance at her, still lightly chewing his lip.

'You know I was just yesterday rereading some twenty or so reports of vampire sightings in West Virginia,' he said with an exaggerated air of privy.

Scully smiled, 'Oh, shut up, Mulder.'

'No, no,' he went on, glad to lighten the mood, 'There were records of suspicious activities and purchases, too... An unusual number of coffins was purchased, for example. And one gentleman, who was described by several - several! - account witnesses to be particularly pale and toothy, attempted to create a ban on garlic in his hometown.'

Scully giggled. 'In truth, we'd probably get farther following those leads than the one we were sent out on.'

'Hey, at least we're out of the penmanship class - anymore paperwork and I would've purchased a rifle.'

'Why? You have a gun.'

'Well,' he grinned at Scully, 'I just always pictured that my first time going postal would be with a rifle...It just seems more elegant.'

She laughed, 'I think you're going to like it in Youngstown then.'

They sped steadily down the highway. The high summer sun was just now beginning peek sideways into the car, coloring everything in gold. Scully was still smiling a little. He stole a look at her, and his own smile faded. Her hair was absolutely beautiful in this kind of sunlight. It looked like soft fire, and every stray strand glowed with a personal light. He thought with longing about what it would be like to run his fingers through it…He quickly turned his eyes back to the road so she wouldn't notice him watching her. She didn't.

'Mulder, pull over sometime, will you...I need to stretch my legs.'

* * *

><p>He stood by the tank waiting for the click from the nozzle. They were in the middle of nowhere. Scully burst out of the gas station doors with coffee and snacks.<p>

'The sun needs to set, it's too hot out here,' she said as she walked up to him and reached into the plastic bag. 'Here,' she smiled and handed Mulder a fat bag of sunflower seeds, 'all them jokes about going postal had me thinking I better stay on your good side.'

Mulder chuckled, 'Thanks.'

He looked at her holding the coffee waiting. The sun was bathing her face, and she was squinting a little. A tuff of flaming hair had fallen clear across her forehead. His fingers twitched slightly. He could brush it off for her, flashed the thought. He could pull it from her face, and tuck it behind her ear...and then his fingertips would slide along her cheek...and they would stop under her chin... and he would lift it up gently, and her lips - they're so red right now, so full, he could-

Click!

Mulder blinked and turned quickly to the gas tank. The hand that had begun to lift slowly toward Scully was now pulling out the nozzle, taking the coffee, putting on the seat belt...

They rode into Youngstown, a quarter past seven and parked by the local motel. They rented two rooms, dropped off their luggage, and asked Rose the receptionist/hostess for the closest decent restaurant. Twenty minutes later they were sitting in a big leather booth at Sunset Diner waiting on triple-decker sandwiches. Scully was thoughtfully sipping an orange soda.

'Sometimes when I think about how many tiny towns like this there are in this country, I feel like the FBI is just blindly groping the elephant's tail,' she mused, 'I can't believe for a second that the piles of cases stored at the bureau cover even a tenth of the actual crimes committed in the US.'

The plates arrived, and Mulder began piling ketchup onto his fries. 'You might be right. I like to think, however, that the majority of human beings are content to peacefully lead their routine lives. We don't need to hunt down everyone, just a select few...'

They ate in silence for a while. Scully was leafing through the file she brought with her. She was rereading the bio of the Youngstown man suspected by the bureau.

'Maybe this guy is one of the elite then,' she finally suggested. 'His name is Grant Jeffrey Blackstone. He was born in San Francisco to wealthy parents and showed exceptional promise from a very young age... attended UCLA on a full scholarship. After graduating, worked for the University's Medical Research program... was responsible for an incredible amount of breakthroughs in the field of genetic research. They were offering him a promotion within the department when, about ten years ago, he came to Virginia for the summer, and…just never went back.'

'I guess the FBI is suspicious of some leftist agenda,' Mulder mused, 'Spontaneous and over-emotional hatred of bureaucracy often drives the young genius to fashion explosive weapons...'

'Maybe. In any case, he quit his position at the University and has not been known to contact any of his previous associates. He lives about five miles out of own in a manor that belonged to a distant deceased relative. He leads a secluded lifestyle-'

A young waitress that had been eyeing them curiously throughout the meal perked up as she overheard Scully's mention of the manor.

'Are y'all talking about the crazy man who lives in the house on the outskirts?' she demanded unabashedly in a ringing voice, 'The angel?'

They looked up at the girl.

'Angel?' Mulder asked.

'Yeah,' the girl walked over, grabbing an iced water pitcher to refill their glasses. She looked barely over fourteen. 'Everyone around here calls him that. You know on account of how…' she lowered her voice with deference, 'you know, he's a hunchback and all.' She leaned back a little and smiled, 'When we were kids there was a story floating around that he was hiding wings in his hump. I know it's just a sweet fairytale to make the man feel handsome, but we all believed it then...and the nickname stuck. Why are y'all looking for him anyway?'

'We just wanted to ask him some questions.'

'He's refused to see anyone for almost a decade now. He went strange after his wife died. No one knew him real well before then either, but at least we'd see him around town. He used to go to the library and take his wife on walks by the lake. He always handed out rock candy to the kids, so everyone liked him.'

The girl paused, still looking curiously from one agent to the other. 'He wasn't scary to look at, you know. His hunchback was big and all but his face wasn't deformed or anything.'

'How did his wife die?' Mulder asked.

The girl shrugged, 'She got real sick. Don't really know with what. It happened real soon after the wedding though. I don't think even a year went by...' Suddenly her eyes widened, 'But you know what? Well, we used to always dare one another to sneak onto his property and try to get a peek at him. It's not really a right thing to do, so I stopped of course. But my friend Willy, he loves that kind of stuff - legends and stories. Well, he got tired of always sneaking and never seeing nothing. So one day the crazy bastard just up and walks onto the front porch and rings the doorbell!'

She burst out a sound laugh, but then leaned in and whispered excitedly, 'and Willy told me - and Willy's never lies about this kind of thing - Willy told me a woman opened the door, and he swore on his dad's grave,' she paused for theatrical effect, relishing the agents' attention, 'he swore she looked just like Angel's dead wife.'

Mulder chuckled incredulously.

Blushing a little, but very proud of her performance, the young girl leaned back and asked nonchalantly, 'So, would y'all like anything for dessert?'

* * *

><p>'I guess you're right Mulder,' Scully said lightly as they walked back to their car. 'I guess in places like these, a majority of criminal activity is limited to young trespassers dire to observe the local eccentric.'<p>

Mulder smiled. 'True. There's them...and then there's the eccentric.'

'Well, we'll visit him in the morning.'

* * *

><p>Mulder sat on the bed, his back leaning against the headboard. The motel TV flickered and buzzed. Its volume was lowered to an almost inaudible murmur. Enjoying the cool night breeze from the window, he cracked sunflower seeds, collecting a neat pile of shells on the bedside table. He glanced over at the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock: 1:37.<p>

He was playing the tapes in his head: the mental videos of Scully. He was watching over and over again the wind rustle through her copper hair in the sun. He was watching and re-watching her smile at his jokes. He was replaying the memories that were old, from weeks ago: Scully piling folders, Scully blowing a lock from her face as she leaned over paperwork, Scully biting into a fingernail...

The older they were, the more faded, watered-down were the colors and details. So he would play fresh memories. He watched the condensation on the glass of water trickle down to touch her fingertips. He could see every glimmer of light on that droplet of water.

And then the flash of her standing in front of him, back turned, the shirt clinging to her body would overcome him. He watched, and re-watched, and re-watched his own fingers reach forward, linger millimeters from her, and finally, slowly, caress her lower back in that one fatal temptation he allowed himself.

Beads of cold sweat broke out on Mulder's chest.

He tossed aside the bag of seeds and jumped off the bed. He went to the bathroom, washed his face in ice water, and then returned to drift off into an uneasy sleep.

He dreamt of Scully. In the dream she was suspended in a glowing golden liquid. Her hair was moving slowly. Her face was pale. She was smiling, but the smile was frozen in place. Only her eyes looked alive. They were looking right at him. They were pleading. She was pleading to be rescued...

Mulder lunged awake in his bed a quarter past sunrise, drenched in sweat. The motel room was bathed in the cool light of an overcast sky. The dream was fading. He regained his breath and rose from the bed.

* * *

><p>They drove down a dirt road lined with trees and pulled up to a large three-story house with a formidable and regal facade. Its expansive porch was framed with white columns and a railing overgrown with morning glories. As they began to ascend its white steps, Mulders hand familiarly brushed against Scully's back. Her heart skipped and she berated herself. The gesture was nothing more than habit. She turned away so he wouldn't see her blushing. And she didn't see his lips twitch as he swallowed violently.<p>

They stood before a set of heavy mahogany doors and rang the bell. A few moments passed without an answer.

'Maybe he's out?' Scully suggested. 'I don't see a car, or a garage...'

Mulder waited and rang the bell again. Nothing.

The agents turned away and looked over the grounds. The overcast sky was solidifying; the clouds grew darker and groaned under their own weight. The delicate purple flower cups were desperately flailing their petals, as the dusty heat began to give way to wind. Suddenly the door creaked open. Startled, the agents whirled about.

A young woman stood in the doorway. She was thin and small framed, with long dark hair pouring over her shoulders and down to her hips. She was wearing an elegant gray dress and she clutched a book by its middle pages in her left hand. Her dark eyes were directed downward and wandered wildly without stopping.

Regaining his composure, Mulder voiced out, 'Morning. My name is Fox Mulder, this is my partner-'

The woman tilted her head back and to the left in a jerky motion. Her eyes rolled in her head. 'I couldn't find the door...' she began to mutter. Her hands were twitching with frenzied movements.

'Oh,' Mulder paused, flustered, 'the door? No, it's okay. We weren't waiting long. We're just looking to speak with-'

'No…' the woman moaned, her head falling again to her chest. She slapped the doorframe lightly with the book she was still clutching by its pages. '…Couldn't find the door…'

Mulder looked at Scully.

'What's your name?' she asked slowly and soothingly.

The young woman pulled her head up and with an obviously great effort tried to look at Scully. She was closing and parting her lips, trying to speak.

'Name,' she finally breathed out, 'name...Alice!' she declared, suddenly loud. 'Like in the wonderland!' she cried and shook her book. Her voice rang across the grounds.

'Alice,' Scully continued softly, 'Alice, are you here alone?'

Alice's eyes suddenly grew wide and her head began to follow the wandering gaze, rolling around and causing her dark hair to billow frantically.

'Yes! Right! Alone – alone...I'll find the queen, and…Off with her Head!...'

Suddenly, she began reciting, marking a broken tempo by lightly smacking the book against the doorframe,

...And down came the golden axe,

In steady hands it flew,

And her head rolled down on the grass,

And now her lips are blue.

But Lo! Her blood, it was not blood

That through her body flowed.

Roses are red! Roses are red!

That from her neck explode!'...

The agents looked at each other uncertainly. Alice stopped and let her head drop again.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered, 'I couldn't find the door,'

'It's alright,' Mulder stammered, 'Really, don't worry about the door.'

'No,' Alice shook her head staring dejectedly about the porch.

Her fluttering gaze caught Scully and she smiled, '…red hair...red hair...' Then her smile collapsed. She suddenly reached out and grabbed Scully's hand.

'If he tells you that you look good in gold, you run, you hear me,' she breathed heavily. 'You run!'

Scully was speechless.

A pick-up truck turned out of the wooded road and pulled toward the house. Alice started and dropped Scully's hand. She began swaying slightly and humming. The agents turned to look at the truck. It pulled up behind their car and the engine cut off. A tarp covered the truck bed, which was loaded with what appeared to be large crates. Alice stopped humming.

'Shh,' she whispered softly, 'don't tell him I couldn't find the door.'

A tall muscular man exited the truck and began to make his way to the porch. He was wearing a long beige trench coat and his dirty-blond hair was tied in a knot. His face was angular and clean-shaven. He looked to be forty. He walked bending forward. On his back towered a large hump.

'Who are you?' He demanded immediately in a large voice, 'What are you doing on my property?'

'Sir,' Mulder pulled out his badge, 'we're here with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My name is Fox Mulder, and this is my partner, Dana Scully. I believe you are Grant Blackstone? We are here to ask you some questions, sir.'

'Ah,' he said calmly as he reached the porch, 'very well. I was under the impression that you came with some kind of religious message. I hate leaving Alice alone, and coming back to see her talking to strangers alarmed me.' He walked up to Alice and kissed her on the head. She smiled. 'She is in a fragile state, and people take advantage...Please, come in.'

The agents entered the dim hall after the hunchback and the young woman.

'I'm almost never out of the house,' Grant continued, walking in front, 'I had to leave this morning to pick up a shipment of formaldehyde I ordered. They weren't able to deliver this time.'

'Actually, sir, that's what we're here to talk to you about,' Scully began, 'your large and frequent purchases of formaldehyde have drawn the FBI's attention.'

'Ah,' he said peering back at her, 'Well that explains why they wouldn't deliver. The men in the town must have informed your bureau about the cargo they were delivering and then got spooked about being seen delivering it.' He chuckled.

They came to the end of the hall and stood before a large and lavishly furnished living room. He let go of Alice's hand. She whispered, 'I'm going reading,' and walked out of the room. He watched her leave as he took off his coat. In just a shirt his hunchback looked somehow bigger.

'Well,' he turned to the agents, 'Mr. Mulder, Ms. Scully, allow me to take you on a tour of my home, and subsequently satisfy your curiosities about my shopping list.'

He opened a barely noticeable door, which turned out to be a small closet, and hung up the trench coat. He then brushed down his light shirt, straightening its unusual folds, and gestured the agents to follow him through an ornate side door. They entered a long hall, exceptionally lit on one side by a string of windows. The wall basking in the dim stormy light was lined with large paintings.

'This house,' Grant began, 'had belonged to my mother's great uncle – a long-stander in Virginia's wealthy due to, as some believe, his exploitation of the bootlegging business in the heyday of Prohibition. He was the architect of this house and had willed upon his deathbed that my mother should own it and leave it to her eldest son. I had often spent summers here as a child, and the property is dear to me. The annex we are in now, I had built myself. My late wife was a painter, and she made the artwork you see hanging here. I consider it to be my most valuable possession. I surprised her with this gallery on our wedding day.'

He paused, his eyes moving with familiarity over the paintings. They were depictions of intricate gardens and outrageous but beautiful creatures. Unreal animals reached up to eat blue fruits from orange trees; large lakes spilled out of woody groves, and oddly dressed people were having lavish feasts in tiny rowboats. Toward the center of the hall hung an eleven-foot tall portrait of two lovers in a heavy ornate frame. It showed a beautiful smiling woman with long black hair, waist-deep in a green pond of strange floating flowers. She was pulling a man off a rocky ledge into the pond. He had large gray wings, resembling those of an albatross. He was slowly sliding down toward her and laughing. It was Grant.

Grant paused before the portrait.

'And she gave me this painting on the day of our one month anniversary.'

He stood silently for some moments, and then spoke again, 'I'm sure you're aware of my background. I was one of the lead researchers in the medical field operating out of Southern California. I was here for a brief summer vacation, revisiting childhood memories, when I met her. I didn't quit my position at the University because of some resentment toward bureaucratic conduct, like my colleagues chose to think. No. I quit simply because I was finally happy. I had worked hard all my life; I had overcome many obstacles, and helped achieve many goals for my research team. And when I met her...I realized for the first time that I was ready to be happy. I knew where I wanted to spend the rest of eternity.'

His voice broke suddenly and faded. Mulder and Scully stood watching him quietly. Grant seemed lost in the surreal green pond.

He cleared his throat. 'Do you know she started that silly rumor about me having wings?' he chuckled, looking over at the agents, 'the summer I arrived here, she had been hired to tend to the garden while the owners were away. She made a mess of my mother's English layout. There were rose bushes everywhere, and wild animals were loose in our yard. She had let the pear tree grow amok and then hung a tire swing under it. I remember my mother's face when she saw it - that was the first time I laughed in months.'

He was smiling at the memory. 'The whole town was buzzing about the rich lady from California and her deformed doctor son. What does this girl do after my mother fires her? She goes into the town and tells everyone that she peeked at me while I undressed in the bedroom and as it turns out I have wings.'

His eyes lifted up to the gray albatross feathers on the back of his portrait. 'Sometimes I think that she really thought that was true. Not like they were hidden inside or something, but that she actually just saw them. She saw the world in a way that was so different...'

Grant turned and proceeded to lead the agents toward the end of the gallery hallway. 'My wife,' he spoke with his back turned, 'was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor eight months after our wedding.'

'I'm sorry,' Scully said quietly after a pause. He didn't answer.

They arrived at the door at the end of the hall.

'I shared that part of my life with you,' Grant's voice had returned to its direct matter-of-factness, 'because I haven't had many visitors these last several years, and, though I do not seek human contact, it is a relief at times,... when it comes without complications like yours.'

Mulder and Scully exchanged a look.

'And I guess because,' he smiled wryly, 'I had to walk through my wife's gallery, in order to bring you to my little display room.'

They walked into a white room lined with bookcases like a library. On the shelves stood pale blue glass cubes of varying sizes. They gleamed bleakly in the dark light of the oncoming storm.

'After my wife's unfortunate illness, I regressed into this house. I spent my days reading. I still keep up with the latest breakthroughs in the medical field. I also took up a hobby for the moments when I need to clear my mind.'

Grant gestured toward the shelves reaching the ceiling, 'I've perfected the art of preserving. It's a very basic and small chemical alteration to the already popular method. These flowers on the mantle behind you were freshly picked seven years ago. As you can see, there are no signatures of decay.'

Scully and Mulder turned around to look. Brilliantly purple morning glories were floating in individual glass cubes of formaldehyde. Each one looked as fresh as the ones crowding the porch.

'I haven't shared this with anyone. My mother passed away three years ago. Apart from her I had no obligations to the outside world.' He put back a small cube he was examining, containing a daddy-long-legs spider, and turned around, 'So, as you can see, the formaldehyde is for a hobby. I give you full permission to take photographs, or see any other part of the house you may chose,' his voice sounded tired, 'I can assure you the rest of it is fairly standard.'

'Thank you, for your hospitality,' Mulder extended his hand and Grant shook it politely. They followed the hunchback back down the hallway.

'Mr. Blackstone,' Scully said carefully as they reentered the living room.

'Yes?'

'If I may ask, what is the nature of your relationship with Alice?'

Grant shot her a sharp look, but then his face softened. 'A man needs the company of a woman, Ms. Scully, you must understand that.'

'I only ask because of Alice's particular condition. Does she have family?'

'She's an orphan,' he replied calmly. 'Alice's condition is fleeting. She has episodes like the one you witnessed every several months or so.'

He bent his neck to the side a little as if to stretch the hump.

'I shouldn't have left her alone today. If the formaldehyde had been delivered, I wouldn't have, I assure you.'

Scully nodded, looking over at Mulder. He cleared his throat.

'Mr. Blackstone, thank you again. And I trust that I can call on you if the bureau is dissatisfied with any part of our interview?'

'Of course, Mr. Mulder,' he nodded, 'Ms. Scully.'

Scully turned toward the door, but paused. 'Oh, excuse me, Mr. Blackstone, may I use your restroom?'

'Yes, of course, its to the right and down the hall. It'll be the second door around the corner.'

The bathroom was in a hallway lined with peach wallpaper. Scully walked along the soft turquoise carpet to a white door and paused. The hallway was leading to a semi-circular room lined with large windows. Rain had broken out during their tour and its rhythmic drops were sliding along the glass. Alice was standing with her back turned to Scully, palms pressed to the window.

Scully's hand slid off the silver doorknob, and she walked forward. She came up to Alice's side. Alice was crying. Her eyes were wandering and occasionally a sharp spasm overwhelmed her body. She rubbed the window glass forcefully with her palms.

'Alice,' Scully whispered as gently as she could, 'Alice, shh…it's going to be okay. Everything will be okay.'

Alice jerked a shoulder upward and swung her head to the side. 'No,' she moaned.

'Alice, can you tell me what's wrong?'

The palms against the glass closed into fists. Alice very slowly brought her arms down by her sides.

'I try and,' and she paused to inhale shakily, 'and you won't listen.'

'I'm listening to you Alice, I am.'

Alice was shaking her head, 'Ok, ok...ok...you listen then. Listen, listen.'

She straightened up and took a deep breath. Her eyes were still wandering all over but she was calm, 'you listen now, listen, listen. If you see me again, you tell me the poem about the ax and the head. Tell it just like how I told you. Exactly the same!'

Her voice grew more insistent; the spasms returned, grabbing her body sporadically. 'You tell me about the head when he's not around! Make him leave and look everywhere. There are tricks and tic-tock, he'll be back soon. He's an angel, he should be laughing, sweet, sweet sweetheart...' Alice swallowed hard, 'But remember what I told you about when to run.'

A door opened around the corner, and Alice pulled back quickly, staring again out of the window. Scully heard footsteps coming toward them. She looked at Alice.

'You see that,' the young woman whispered rubbing her palms against the rain-covered window-glass, 'that's my eternity.'

'Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Blackstone,' Scully got up, 'I saw Alice here and thought to see how she was doing.'

'Of course, Ms. Scully. And I was just coming to check on you. Alice?' He turned smiling toward her, 'Is everything alright?'

She returned the smile, 'Just watching the rain. I should be reading...'

* * *

><p>'Well the formaldehyde checks out,' Mulder mumbled uncertainly as the two of them walked back to their car. He was holding the lap of his jacket over Scully's head. Their bodies grazed against one another for a second and Scully looked away.<p>

Mulder started the engine and waited for Grant to come out and move his truck. The hunchback emerged with a large umbrella. He made his way through the mud and climbed into the truck. As the agents pulled out past him, he honked a good-bye. They plowed slowly down the muddy forest road, trying to see through the grizzle.

'It does check out,' she replied twenty minutes too late, 'but Jesus, Mulder, that poor woman was a wreck.' She told him about their conversation outside of the bathroom.

Mulder was silent a moment. 'What gets to me is that what that waitress said was true.'

'What?'

'She said her friend told her that a woman answered the door, and that that woman looked just like Grant's ex-wife. The woman in the portrait looked just like Alice.'

'Yes, Mulder, I noticed that, too. It just proves that he found this poor girl somewhere, noticed the uncanny resemblance and forced her to live with him. Every time he's around her she's compliant and aloof, but as soon as he's out the door, she acts absolutely terrified. I think she's a prisoner in that house, Mulder. You heard him say himself, when he first walked up: she's gullible and people can take advantage.'

He bit his lip thoughtfully. 'What was that little poem about the head...and you running?'

'What was that? Mulder, she's obviously suffering from some genetic defect. The movements of her eyes and body, they're like symptoms of down syndrome.'

Scully leaned back in her seat, 'I don't believe that she is an orphan. That would make two convenient coincidences for Grant. No, he must have kidnapped or lured her away from somewhere.'

They rode on for sometime. Once within the town, Mulder began to retrace the path toward Sunset Diner.

'You're right,' he finally broke the silence, 'something's wrong with that house. I'll fax the formaldehyde report and extend our stay on some pretense. It's Friday that shouldn't be difficult.'

'We can trace down how Grant met Alice,' Scully tuned in enthusiastically.

Mulder didn't answer. Looking over his shoulder, he was nudging the car into a parking space. Once settled, he unbuckled his seatbelt.

'Scully?'

'Yeah?'

'I've got a hunch that Grant's ex-wife was named Alice.'

She paused. 'His file wasn't that extensive. It mostly just mentioned his medical background. But if they're both named Alice...'

'Then that would be two convenient coincidences.'

The friendly teenager was apparently off-duty, and their plates were slopped down by a heavy-set woman with a distinct mole. She took some time to make it clear that no one was more important than her even if they had a fancy hairstyle. Drink orders were met with a scoff. The agents ate quickly and left.

The plan to meet with several town officials was easy to execute: they were all gathered in one bar. The Elephant wasn't the only bar in Youngstown, but it was the only one that had two pool tables and was therefore regarded as classy.

The plan may as well have been to interview only one person, since no individual's story differed in detail from any other. There didn't appear to be any information in Youngstown that every single one of its residents didn't know. The local chief of medicine, the sheriff, the bartender, and the boy selling cherries all told the same story about Grant Blackstone, or, as they all liked to say, Angel.

According to the townspeople, Angel was a wealthy hunchback doctor from California. He married Alice Moya. Alice was an orphan. Her mother, Vera Moya, had her by a Spanish man in Florida. They never married but she took his name. He died in a car accident before Alice was seven months, and Vera moved to Youngstown to live with her mother. They both died in a tragic house fire while little Alice was hiding in the woods on account of being beaten for stealing peaches out of Mr. Smithson's yard. With no surviving relatives, the town took Alice on, and seeing as how they didn't have an orphanage, they took turns baby-sitting until she was old enough to work. She was a sweet girl and not too much trouble. She was nineteen, and working at the estate, when Angel and the mother came to visit. She got fired for wrecking the rich lady's garden. Angel married her a year after, and sometime later she fell ill and was buried in the Youngstown cemetery next to her mother and grandmother.

Mulder and Scully sat by themselves at a rickety wooden table in the back of The Elephant. It was a quarter to eight, and all their leads in the town were spent. The bureau was satisfied with their report and was awaiting their return on Monday. They sat silently, lost in thought.

Scully was rubbing the frosted liquor label on her glass. Mulder was watching her tiny finger move back and forth. Squeezed into the corner of the bar, their thighs were an inch apart, and it was distracting him. He looked up at her face. She was looking away. An ice cube cracked, breaking under the warmth of whiskey.

Scully turned to him, 'They all know about Alice Moya, but no one knows anything about Alice.'

'That's true.'

They went over this topic an hour ago. Scully was convinced that Grant had kidnapped the girl from a neighboring town, but she faltered at coming up with a strategy to prove it. When the townspeople were informed of the new Alice, everyone agreed in unison that the neighboring town was probably greatly obliged to Angel for caring for the mentally challenged girl.

She sighed.

Mulder's theories leaned in a different direction. There was something about Grant he couldn't put his finger on.

'I don't think it's as simple as mere kidnapping,' he said finally.

'What do you mean?'

'I'm not sure.' He looked into his glass. 'I understand what you mean when you say that she's a prisoner in that house, but I don't think she's a stranger there.'

He paused trying to better rephrase this feeling, 'She seemed...invested in everything around her.'

'She couldn't find the door, Mulder! That poor thing is trying to run!'

'No - no, she apologized for not finding it. She apologized over and over.'

Scully frowned. 'But she was crying...'

Mulder watched the cubes melt in his drink. 'I guess what I'm thinking is that a man like Grant- he wouldn't kidnap a young look-a-like girl from a neighboring town. I just don't think that's his m.o.'

He looked over at her. Scully was pursing her lips. She did that every time she thought he made a good point, and he knew that.

The bartender wandered over. She was a rosy voluptuous woman. Mulder thought of her as the good cop to the gruff waitress from earlier.

'Just checking up on y'all,' she called sweetly. She gathered their empty glasses into one plump hand and looked them both over. 'Y'all trying to rise early tomorrow, or are y'all going to drink a bit?' she asked with a friendly wink.

'Depends on how you treat us here in Youngstown,' Mulder grinned.

The bartender's eyebrows shot up, 'Oh!' she grinned back, 'Why, the man from the government is going to try to flirt his way into some free drinks!'

Scully giggled.

The bartender rubbed Mulder's shoulder affectionately, still grinning. 'You're going to fit right in here, Mr. Government!'

'Billy!' she yelled laughing, 'bring these nice folks some drinks on the house. Let's show them how we welcome guests in Youngstown!'

A loud cheer echoed through the bar.

* * *

><p>'I didn't fall!' she cried indignantly, 'the asshole pushed me when he was running out to puke!'<p>

They were in Scully's motel room. It was only a quarter past ten. There was a giant scrape on her knee. Flaked skin, dusted with dirt, framed its yellow and pink edges.

'Frankly,' she said, narrowing her eyes at Mulder, 'I don't understand where you were during all this.'

'What? I was peeling you off the ground!'

'Why? You should've been shooting the bastard!'

They were both laughing.

He had finally gotten the first aid kit pried open. Scully was working the TV remote with both hands. She was sitting on the bed with the wounded leg hanging over the edge. He plopped down on the carpet, facing her bloody knee.

'Ooh! Check it out! Columbo- OW!'

'Oh, shush up,' he patted the raw flesh with the disinfectant as gently as he could. 'Stings at first and then you don't die.'

She laughed again softly.

He reached into the kit, pulled out the bandage and cheesecloth, and began to wrap it around her knee.

He was almost done when he felt her eyes. She was watching him. His heart dropped. He was suddenly very aware that he was touching her skin. He looked at his left hand. It was cupping her calf. The thumb was pressing gently into the groove by her shinbone. Her skin was so smooth... He finished quickly, and, without looking up, shut the kit. He could tell she was still looking at him and it was making his temples burn.

'...Mulder?' she said suddenly, quietly.

He couldn't look up. If she saw his eyes right now, she would know. He felt trapped, scared. It was hard to breathe. He sat with his eyes fixed on the carpet.

'...hm?' he managed.

Her hand began to slither along the comforter, toward him. He looked at it deliriously.

'...I...' she began. Her voice was heavy and strained. '...I, um...'

Her hand was at the edge of the bed. It paused and the fingernails dug violently into the bad motel pattern before going limp with uncertainty. He looked at it. He should take it. He should just reach out and pull it - her to him.

And then he raised his head and met her gaze.

Her blue eyes were shining. Her lips were parted and she was breathing shallowly. Her chest was rising and falling at a frantic tempo. Her flaming hair fell in wild swarms. She looked unbelievably - unforgivably beautiful.

His heart was thundering in his ears. His mind was spinning. He stood up and stepped toward her. She was now looking up at him. He moved closer, his knee pressed into the bed, a hair away from hers. Her eyes grew wide, but she didn't move. He lifted his hand slowly, reaching for her cheek, leaning closer to her lips -

Suddenly a blatant pounding descended on the door.

Mulder jerked back and whirled around.

The pounding persisted. Muffled cries followed in the process,

'Excuse me! Please open the door! It's a huge emergency!'

He couldn't focus; the room was spinning. Crazed thoughts were streaming through his mind. He turned back and looked at Scully.

She was looking away and breathing heavily into her knuckles.

'Please open the door! Please!' the shouting and banging continued.

He turned and, covering the room in three strides, grabbed the door open.

Outside, the young girl from the diner was standing with a boy that also looked to be about fourteen. As soon as the door flew open, they jumped back, and stared at Mulder in dumb silence.

'...Yes?' he said after a moment.

The boy nudged the girl in the ribs with his elbow.

'Sir, we're sorry to bother you, but this is an emergency,' she instantly stammered out, 'we can't go to the police. They won't listen. I heard Aunt Rose saying that the new guests were from the government and that that must be how the women wear their hair in D.C...' she was faltering breathlessly, 'So we came to you because-because Willy saw something horrid and you have to come help us rescue her!'

Mulder moved aside and ushered the young couple into the room.

'Rescue who? What happened?' He looked at Willy, who took the cue with relief.

'Sir,' he began emphatically, 'I know it's unlawful to trespass on other people's property and I am truly sorry, but this matter trumps my malfeasance.' He said that word carefully. 'Earlier tonight I snuck over to the Angel house. I just wanted to see the woman who opened the door again. I looked in all the windows around the back, but it was just dark and empty inside, like it always is. I was about to leave and then - I still don't know what yanked me, sir - but I got up on the porch and tried the front door.'

He paused to draw his breath and glanced at Scully who was now standing next to Mulder, listening intently.

'And would you believe, it was unlocked! I don't know why, I had never assumed it would be. Well, I went in as quietly as I could. The whole house was dark and empty, and as silent as a grave.'

The girl was staring at Willy with wide-eyed awe and admiration.

'I started wandering all around downstairs, through all the different rooms. I don't know how long I was in there when all of a sudden I heard a noise. It was some kind of rumbling or clanging. It was coming from behind a wall, so it was hard to hear. When I leaned my ear to it, the wall moved!'

Willy was gesturing now, his eyes moving from one to the other of his audience. His voice was rising and falling theatrically.

'There were stairs there, going down. So, down I went as quiet as I could. It was dark. And then I came to a room. It looked like a crazy laboratory. The hunchback was there, but he didn't see me crouching behind the door. He was standing by a long table, and I couldn't see what he was doing for the longest time. And then he stepped away, and I saw the woman, sir. She was floating in a tank!'

The young girl gasped loudly, clasping her face. Willy shot her an annoyed look, 'You heard it already, stupid.' She dropped her hands, blushing.

'He had her drowned in a tank, sir. I don't know how I didn't holler when I saw it. She was all white and not breathing. I just got out of there as fast as I could. I knew the sheriff wouldn't believe me, on account of,' he shifted uncomfortably, 'I may have made up stuff before to get out of trouble. But I wouldn't lie about something like this! I remembered Specks was saying her aunt was hosting people from the government, so I got her to take me here and tell you the story. There's no rescuing to be done, the woman was drowned, but you have to help me get the sheriff. He's got to lock Angel up!'

Mulder looked at Scully. They both knew any opportunity to visit the house again was worthwhile.

'Let's check it out,' she said.

* * *

><p>Sheriff Collins scowled at Willy, but the presence of federal agents was too intimidating for him to snap at the boy. They were back at The Elephant. Collins scratched his chest, shifted his gaze from one agent to the other, and finally grunted gruffly. He creaked off the barstool, polished the last of his beer, and they followed him out of the door.<p>

On the white columned porch of the manor, the sheriff hesitated a second before knocking.

'Just seems downright rude to be bothering well-mannered folks like Mr. Angel on account of some fantasy concocted by this rattail,' he muttered. Willy glared at him and fixed his eyes on the house defiantly.

The hunchback opened the door just after the second knock. He was in long pajamas and slippers. His eyes were tired and bloodshot, and his hump seemed to be weighing him down more than usual.

'Sheriff Collins? What can I do for you?'

'Good night, Mr. An-, Mr. Blackstone, sorry to bother you at such a late hour,' he shifted a little, hoping that the agents behind him were clearly visible, 'We were obligated to stop by - there was a report of a small incident. The boy here thinks he saw something...'

Collins drew a breath and cleared his throat, 'Sir, did you -...do you have a young lady staying with you here, sir?'

'Of course I do,' the hunchback said blankly, 'I live here with my wife Alice. You know that, Mr. Collins. You were at our wedding...'

The sheriff started, taken aback. 'Mr. Blackstone,' he spoke in a hushed and flustered tone, 'your wife passed away years ago, may she rest in peace.'

Grant blinked, and shook his head quickly. 'Excuse me, I meant...' He rubbed his eyes and peered more intently at the group on his doorstep. 'I'm sorry, I meant to say...she's my - I never officially remarried - but she's my companion. Her name is also Alice.'

'Ah,' the sheriff sighed with relief, 'so there is a woman staying here. May I assume she isn't - …May we meet her?'

The hunchback leaned back allowing them into the house, 'Very well, I suppose...'

Once in the living room, the agents looked at Willy. He was frantically scanning the walls. Grant left them and walked up a broad stairwell to disappear behind an entry to the second floor.

'I don't think it was this room,' Willy said nervously, 'the wallpaper was different I think...I'm not sure,' he faltered.

'Slow down there, kid,' the sheriff scoffed, 'Mr. Angel seems to imply that his companion is alive and well.' He liked using the same word as Grant used to refer to the woman.

'It's probably some other lady,' Willy muttered.

Scully and Mulder looked at each other. It was hard to decipher anything from the ongoing events. Mulder read Scully's concern, though, for the way Grant initially explained himself to the sheriff. Believing that his wife was still alive did not help clear him of possibly having kidnapped a mentally susceptible look-alike girl.

'Maybe, he was just startled from sleep and a little incoherent,' he said to her quietly. She shrugged.

The doorway at the top of the stairwell fluttered open. The hunchback emerged. A light figure followed him and gracefully descended the stairs.

Willy gasped.

It was Alice. She was wearing long silvery robe that billowed gently about her slender form. Her dark hair cascaded about her shoulders. She walked up to the group and extended her hand to Mulder.

'Hello, I'm Alice.' she spoke in a clear melodious voice. 'Grant said we had some company and that you wanted to meet me?'

There was no trace of the frazzled tics or the rolling of the head and eyes from earlier. Alice held herself with unbelievable grace and clarity. She extended a hand to Scully and then stepped back to Grant's side.

'Uh, hello, miss,' the unaddressed sheriff volunteered, 'I'm-'

'Sheriff Collins, of course,' she smiled, 'It's good to see you sheriff.'

'Ah.' Collins scratched his head and flushed, 'Well, ah, Mr. Ang- Mr. Blackstone, I greatly apologize for interrupting your night. I...you must forgive us...protocol and all that...'

He stammered a few more incoherent words, as Alice said good night and left back upstairs.

'But that was the lady!' Willy cried in a mortified voice, 'He had her drowned in a-'

He was cut off by a healthy smack to the head from Collins.

'You keep your trap shut from now own! Bothering gentle folks with your goddamn nonsense!'

'Mr. Blackstone,' Scully began, 'May I ask, Alice's behavior, it seems to have-'

'My Alice has a condition,' Grant said sternly. A hint of annoyance was entering his tone for the first time. 'It peaks at certain points and she suffers tremendously. I have access to the best treatments designed for her, and it is something we have learned to cope with.'

The sheriff was blinking. He didn't understand the exchange, but Grant's annoyed tone alarmed him.

'Sir, again, I apologize greatly,' he cut in before Scully could say anything else, 'you'll have to excuse us. I assure you, you will not be bothered like this again. Have a good night, sir.' With that he ushered the group out of the living room.

Out on the porch, he gave Willy another sound smack. They made their way toward the sheriff's car. The boy tread along with a defeated look.

The sheriff buckled in and put his keys to the ignition, but his eyes were lost on the porch of the house and he sat for several moments without moving.

'Something bothering you, sir?' Mulder finally asked from the passengers seat.

Collins flinched and started the engine. 'Nah,' he said gruffly, grabbing the seat as he backed out of the driveway.

'Just a little de ja vu, as they say.'

* * *

><p>Back at the motel, Aunt Rose was waiting up. She hustled after the agents with fresh towels and a cascade of nervous apologies for her niece's behavior earlier. Apparently Specks and Willy stole the guest entry book and went bothering the agents while Rose was out of the reception hall. 'That stupid girl will be the death of me,' she kept inserting. Mulder and Scully managed a shy glance and a good night, before the agitated woman promptly tucked them away into their respective rooms.<p>

Sleep came with great difficulty. Theories about the strangeness of the Angel house tangled about in each agent's mind, leading nowhere. Tossing on the rough motel sheets, the hunches and plans for further investigation eventually gave way to other thoughts: the personal thoughts that they sought hard to ignore.

Scully moaned with quiet frustration. Pushing Mulder out of her mind was futile. She remembered the electricity that shot through her when he held and bandaged her leg. It had burned worse than the disinfectant. She remembered that her hand started moving toward him, and it was hard to breathe. A hard vice crushed her heart when she realized she was too weak and scared to reach out and touch him. And then his eyes were locked on hers, boiling black. And then his knee was pressing the edge of the bed between her legs. Scully grabbed her pillow and clasped it to her face, struggling to suffocate herself.

* * *

><p>In the morning came a different torture. No longer shielded by the warmth of drunken sentimentality, Scully and Mulder were fully and awkwardly professional. All familiar inhibitions set in at dawn. For Scully, it was a lifetime of practicality and a fear of affection; for Mulder it was his soft awkwardness and the fear of losing Scully. With incredible self-control and pure agony, they were each observing a field of personal space. It was a brilliantly stupid, but solidly ground tactic.<p>

'He was a heavy advocate of stem cell research.' Scully was scanning a computer screen, 'Two years before leaving the university he filed a proposal for a string of experiments intended on proving that unhealthy body parts could be regenerated with the use of these cells...'

They were at the library. They were alone, apart from the desk attendant who was stuck in a crossword puzzle. It was deathly quiet. Scully was perusing Grant Blackstone's extensive biography. It contained no information about Grant's wife or anything dating after his marriage.

Mulder was convinced the answer lay in Grant's medical expertise. The record of his career painted a man who spent his life defeating obstacles. Burdened by his deformity, disgusted by the pity in others, Grant dug his teeth into his intellect and proved the public wrong over and over again with startling leaps forward in his research. His ambition and will power made him a man defiant of nature. He refused to acknowledge the handicap nature had given him, and he refused to abide by her laws in his many experiments. So, was he finally defeated when a malignant tumor took away the love of his life? Or did he defy nature once more? In that unfair and cruel battle, could he have possibly found a way to cheat?... Mulder was sure that he was on the right track. He was close, but the answer was eluding him in the very last moment.

'Could he have... figured out how to save his wife from the tumor?'

'That would make no sense,' Scully was rubbing her eyes tiredly, 'Why would he keep that a secret? And, for crying out loud,' she smiled wryly, 'the whole town buried Alice Moya in the local cemetery.'

They had been collecting background information for several hours with no light at the end of the tunnel. The simplest explanation reaffirmed Grant's own story - the story of a medical researcher who retired and, having lost his first wife, took up company of a young woman with a condition that he was able to treat at its critical points. The manner in which Grant came across the girl bothered no one. Sheriff Collins refused outright to pursue any sort of investigation into a possible kidnapping. Frankly, Scully herself was beginning to lose sight of why it was important to get the young woman out of the house. Alice's behavior the previous night was a complete turn-around from the scared handicapped girl they met earlier. Alice was coherent and poised now, and acted like a steady and adoring wife toward Grant. Then why was something wrong?

Scully slammed the exit key with annoyance and folded her arms.

Mulder looked up from a historical archive of local architecture. He looked at her as she bit into her nails. She looked back at him. Their gaze froze together. Scully flushed crimson and turned away defiantly. Her eyes fell on a large bookshelf topped with a small metal plaque that read 'Children's Fiction.'

Suddenly, a vague thought tugged at her. She felt as though she had mislabeled something... She had attributed both Alice's tics and her words to delirium, but, in the ill flow of wild phrases that Alice had muttered, a distinct request was made. There was something that she had taken the time to specifically ask Scully to do.

'Mulder,' Scully said, suddenly seized by the new idea, 'what was that poem that she recited when we first met her?'

He frowned a moment, 'Poem?...Oh, the odd, awkward one about the head?'

'Yes, Mulder, she asked me to recite it back to her,' she exclaimed excitedly, 'When we were outside of the bathroom, she specifically asked me to recite the poem next time I see her. She asked that we get Grant out of the house, recite the poem, and...' she began to falter, 'and then... we're supposed to look for something...'

She sat back, biting her nails uncertainly. Mulder was staring off, deep in thought.

'Look I know it sounds bizarre,' she cried finally, 'but, I don't know, Mulder, I just have this overwhelming feeling, and that request makes some kind of sense to me. I just,' she dropped her hands in frustration, 'Mulder, there's something wrong with that house, and going over there to fulfill her odd request is the only thing I can think of to do.'

Mulder was still listening in silence.

'If I don't,' she said finally, 'it will haunt me forever, I know it.'

He nodded.

'Well, that's our plan then,' he said calmly, 'So, how are we going to get Grant out of the house?'

* * *

><p>The agents walked up the driveway to the manor.<p>

Figuring out how to get Grant to leave was complicated, but after some thinking Mulder came up with a promising plan. They knew Collins would never help them trick the hunchback, so the next best thing was to trick Collins himself. They called him and lied, saying the FBI was alarmed by a section of their report on the purchases of formaldehyde; there was something highly illegal they initially overlooked. They assured Collins it was extremely serious and that the chances of prosecution against Mr. Blackstone were high. They then told the sheriff that they needed to confirm a few remaining details and instructed him to collect Grant and meet them at the precinct.

While the sheriff readily scurried off on the task, they weren't sure that Grant would take the bait. He never displayed any guilt or self-consciousness about his formaldehyde. Yet, they watched from the wooded grove as he opened the door, heard the sheriff out, called to the back of the house and promptly left the estate in the sheriff's car. They wouldn't have long, but at least they'd be alone with Alice.

She opened the front door and looked at the agents.

'Oh, it's you!' she said musically, 'Grant stepped out... Is there something I can help you with?'

'Yes,' Scully answered, 'we just thought maybe we could speak with you.'

Alice arched her eyebrows in surprise, but then smiled politely, 'Well, sure, I suppose.'

They followed her down the hallway and into the living room. The sun was soon to be setting. Its rays shone through the beautiful manor windows, playing between the elegant furniture. Alice gestured the agents to a turquoise sofa, and lowered into the adjoining chair. All her movements were keenly marked with graceful poise.

'Well, what did you wish to speak to me about?'

'Alice,' Scully began, 'when I first met you, you asked me to come back here and recite a poem for you.'

Alice frowned delicately.

'It, um,' Scully went on, 'it was a poem about a head on the guillotine...and roses.'

'Ah,' she smiled and shook her head. 'Maybe I should explain,' she said, 'you see I suffer from a condition. Occasionally, I have episodes. I never remember them in detail, but I'm sure they include much incoherent jabber. You understand, it's common to those prone to epileptic moments.'

She brushed a thick, luscious strand of dark hair from her cheek, and continued.

'Grant cares for me dutifully. He's well versed in the nature of the illness as well as the treatments for it that I must undergo in order to ease the episodes.' She smiled, 'He's so patient.'

'But…the poem?' Scully asked uncertainly.

'Oh, well that,- you know, it's most likely a poem from my childhood. My mother,' Alice laughed shyly, 'my mother used to tell me when I was a little girl that I was the Alice in Wonderland from the Lewis Carroll story. I loved it. I would spend hours exploring the woods, imagining wonderland and how beautiful it must be.'

Alice's eyes shone with the relish of the memory. Her elegant face was serene. In the turquoise chair, she looked both fragile and regal. Tiny flakes of dust, illuminated by the sunlight, floated peacefully about her.

'Well,' she laughed a little, 'I liked to make up my own parts to the story. I would invent new creatures and conversations. I wrote little poems all the time. They were never any good, but I guess I must have,' she blushed slightly, 'recited one of them during my last episode.'

She looked at Scully. Scully was watching her. She didn't feel ready to leave.

'Alice,' Mulder cleared his throat, 'is your condition common in your family?'

'Oh, I wouldn't know,' the young woman shrugged lightly, 'I never met my father, and my mother and grandmother both died in a fire when I was six.'

Scully frowned. 'Your mother died in a fire?'

'Yes, I was hiding in these woods when it happened. I can't remember why, I was feeling guilty about something and didn't want to get in trouble. When I came out after sundown, our house was blazing, and the men were running all around trying to put it out.' She looked sadly down at her hands, 'It was too late by then. They were gone.'

'But,' she persevered with a smile, 'the people in Youngstown were kind to me. They cared for me and raised me. I owe them so much.'

Scully and Mulder were sitting in stunned silence, completely taken aback.

'Alice,' Scully managed finally, 'Alice, what's your family name?'

'My surname?' she said, seeming surprised by the question, 'It's Moya. Why do you ask?'

The agents looked at each other with alarm.

'Alice,' Mulder said as gently as he could, 'Alice Moya of Youngstown is dead. She lies buried by her mother and grandmother in the town cemetery.'

'I don't think so,' Alice laughed uncertainly and frowned at the agents, 'I don't understand why you would say that.'

'You're not Alice Moya,' Scully pleaded suddenly, 'Alice Moya is dead. I don't know what he did to you, but you have to trust us to help you.'

Alice's shoulder jerked lightly. She was frowning stronger, a tiny line appeared at her brow. 'Is this, is this some kind of disgusting joke?' she exclaimed breathlessly.

The agents shook their head nervously both starting to speak, but she cut them off.

'Grant told me over and over not to trust anyone,' she declared straightening in her chair. 'I thought he was being over-protective, but I see now what he meant. Where do you get off abusing a person with my condition so cruelly?'

'Alice, no, please listen to me,' Scully cried with a pained voice, 'you asked me to come here and tell you something. You were so insistent.'

'I would like you to leave now,' Alice responded coldly.

'But, I-'

'Leave.'

Scully froze. She opened and closed her lips, and then drawing a quick breath she stammered out uncertainly,

'And down came the golden axe,

In steady hands it flew-'

Alice froze her dark eyes fixed on Scully's lips.

'And her head rolled down on the grass,' Scully went on, her voice growing more certain.

'And now her lips are blue.'

Alice sat rigidly, but made no sound and did not move her eyes from Scully's words. Her face was white as marble. The soft dark hair framed and caressed its surreal beauty. Scully's voice was steady now. It rang soundly through the soft golden room.

'But Lo! Her blood, It was not blood

That through her body flowed.

Roses are red! Roses are red!

That from her neck explode!'

She closed her mouth and looked searchingly at Alice. Alice didn't move, her gaze still fixed on Scully. Golden sunlight cascaded gently on her black locks. The tiny flakes of dust flickered and drifted about her.

And then one of her black eyes darted sideways violently.

Scully let out an unnatural scream and stumbled backwards against Mulder. He was frozen mortified, gaping at Alice.

Alice moaned loudly and a spasm overcame her.

Suddenly, thundering footsteps came rolling from the marble floor of the front hallway, and Grant burst into the living room. His shirt was drenched in sweat and his eyes roamed, searching the room. He spotted Alice convulsing, her small frame hanging limp in the turquoise chair.

Grant let out a beastly howl and darted over, scooping up the tiny woman.

'How dare you?' he screamed at the agents gently holding Alice's sobbing face to his chest. 'How dare you? You beasts! You wretched scum!' He faltered, wrathful words battling one another to break from his lips, but could not continue yelling.

He was tending nervously to the crying girl in his arms. He caressed her hair over and over. She was calmer now, but would not lift her face, clinging with both fists to Grant's shirt.

He turned to walk her gently up the stairs.

The agents watched him disappear behind the door in complete shock. Scully looked at Mulder, tears welling up in her eyes,

'I didn't know, I swear,' she muttered fighting them back.

'Ssh,' Mulder said gently, 'Of course we didn't know, how could we have known that?'

He made a move to try and comfort Scully, but just then Sheriff Collins flew into the living room panting and collapsing forward to catch his breath.

'Nice to see you folks,' he said between heaving gasps, his voice dripping in sarcasm. The embarrassment he had to endure when Grant met him and realized the agents tricked Collins into luring him out of his home, was hard on the sheriff. He glared from one agent to the other as his breathing evened. He had done his best to rush back with Mr. Angel and seize the trespassers, but he couldn't quite keep up with the hunchback. Now the three stood in the living room, waiting. Scully was staring at the floor looking lost and miserable.

The door opened at the top of the stairs. The hunchback emerged and proceeded with grave and heavy steps toward the group.

'You cannot begin to perceive the injuries beset by you, today,' he said quietly in a voice hard like steel. 'I would attempt to understand for what purpose someone could commit such vile actions against so fragile a creature,' he went on, 'but I know that I would never be able to find an answer.'

He straightened beneath the formidable hump, 'Sheriff, please ask these people to leave.'

Collins jumped up and threw the agents another vile glare.

'Again, Mr. Blackstone, I'm so sorry,' he quickly blubbered, 'they fooled me, and maybe it was easy for them to do so, for I'm sure that a fool I indeed am, sir.'

He wiped the perspiration from his brow nervously, and threw Grant another pleading look. The hunchback stood unmoved, his face like stone.

'We'll be on our way now, sir. Again, so sorry that this happened, I...I assure you, I,...' he faltered weakly and finally, finding no other solution, blurted out a pained and ashamed good night.

Grant's gaze suddenly fell on Scully. She was standing by the large window, looking dejectedly at the floor. The golden light of the setting sun was bathing her, fluttering ardently in her curly red hair. A tear was running down her cheek.

'I had never noticed,' he breathed with sudden softness, lost in some reverie, 'I had never noticed how good you look in gold, Ms. Scully.'

She looked up him with startled eyes. He blinked and moved away his gaze, fixing it again on Collins.

'Good night,' he said curtly and turned to leave the room.

The sheriff turned to the agents, and bitterly shoved Mulder toward the front door.

Collins walked after them down the porch with a mean scowl. He was still too intimidated by the agents to berate them, though.

'I don't know if the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be happy to know about certain behaviors on the part of their people,' he finally threatened with a gruff voice, mostly hurt than angry at the agents having tricked him.

Scully apologized a few times, and his face softened gradually. They stood by their cars uncertainly for a while. Collins scratched his chest, looked over at the manor one more time and let out a tired heavy sigh.

'To be completely honest, folks,' he said suddenly and quietly, 'I don't fully blame you for obsessing over that house. The whole town buzzes rumors about it all the time, but until you folks came to me with the kid, I don't believe any of us had set foot here in years.'

He paused again, still scratching his chest thoughtfully, frowning a little.

'And,' he darted a self-conscious glance at the agents, 'not to sound like that idiot boy, but... well, you can't deny it's eerie...- it's eerie how much that young lady looks like Alice Moya.'

The sun had set, and frayed clouds were peeling open pockets of a star-dusted sky. A gentle breeze was drifting through the silent grounds. The leaves on the morning glory vines fluttered delicately. The large white manor towered above them. Its black windows gaped outward, cold and speechless.

Sheriff Collins smacked his hand against his thigh loudly, 'Well, enough nonsense,' he said loudly. 'I'm here to escort you folks back to town. Don't worry, I'm not planning to bother with any reports or anything like that. You're folks of sound mind and I know I won't find you bothering Mr. Angel again. Seeing something that odd for the first time overwhelms people, and they let their wits get away from them. But, no harm done,' he roughly patted Mulder on the shoulder, 'let me back my car out, and we'll head to town. I suggest you folks get some sound sleep, relax. There's more to do in Youngstown than trying to figure Mr. Angel out. The Elephant is having happy hour noon till ten tomorrow.'

He stepped back and peered at the agents sternly. They nodded some consent, and, satisfied, Collins turned toward his car, keys jiggling in his hand.

As they waited for the sheriff to pull out of the driveway, Mulder looked at Scully. She was staring out of her window.

'It's weird how he ended up saying that you look good in gold,' he said to her, 'Just like the Al-'

'Mulder,' she cut him off in a strained voice, 'I don't want to talk about that. Not right now.' Her eyes welled up again.

Mulder quieted, feeling sorry for his partner. He looked up and stared at the walls of the manor. Suddenly, he saw that the hunchback was standing at one of the windows, watching them. His face looked pale and gaunt in the twilight. He stood for a moment longer, gazing down, and then he melted backward into the darkness.

Something was irking Mulder. There was something he was missing. Just like with the Bobby file, there was a similarity here. There was a common prevailing factor in the case of the hunchback and something else he was very familiar with... He blinked thoughtfully, and turned to pull out of the driveway after Collins.

* * *

><p>They didn't speak the entire ride until, back at the motel, Scully slipped in a quick good night and hid in her room.<p>

Mulder took a shower and ambled about restlessly for a while. His thoughts dwelled on Grant and the odd hunch that was tugging at him. He tossed an empty sunflower seed bag into the wastebasket, and hesitating a moment, decided to make a run to the gas station.

He walked back to his car, cracking seeds and spitting them out onto the parking lot lit by the cold lime streetlights. A little further out he heard indistinct chatter of two young voices. He saw the two kids - Specks and Willy - by a sidewalk bench. Willy was gesturing eagerly, a lit cigarette clinging to his fingers. He was walking back and forth, his voice hitting colorful notes to accentuate parts of a story. A few phrases echoed toward Mulder.

'White like a sheet!...hunchback as big as a boulder...and beakers, fizzling and boiling with evil concoctions...'

Specks was sitting on the bench, mouth open, adoring eyes fixed on Willy.

Suddenly Willy noticed Mulder looking at them. He stuttered and flushed, looking away and taking a drag of the cigarette. Mulder decided to leave them alone and got into the car.

He looked over at Scully's door as he walked down the motel hallway. He paused and leaned his ear against it. Inside was quiet. Mulder sighed and went back to his room.

He undressed, turned on the TV, and hit the lights. He plopped down on the bed, dragging the bag of seeds to his side. The hunch kept tugging, but Mulder was too exhausted to think about Grant anymore. He cracked a seed and spit it out staring blankly at the flickering screen. Gradually, melancholy set in.

He thought about Scully. He had never seen her weaken or falter, and tonight she probably cried herself to sleep. He thought about her blue eyes as they welled up with tears in that golden room. It was a heart-wrenching scene.

Mulder added another shell to the little pile on the nightstand and regressed into his familiar habit of replaying mental tapes of Scully. He watched her catch his gaze in the library, the flush coloring her cheeks. He watched her at Sunset Diner, giggling at a joke. He watched her turn back and throw a glance at him as they walked to The Elephant. He watched and re-watched the meticulously gathered and coveted videotapes of his beloved Scully.

He thought about her at the gas station on Thursday. The memory bothered him. He couldn't remember the brand on the coffee cup. He thought about it hard, visualizing Scully standing there, her curly hair fluttering gently, her blue eyes shining. He couldn't remember the coffee cup. Then the gas station itself started to blur away. There was a large sign on their doorway, but the words were lost. Mulder turned back to Scully, looking over her beautiful face. Did she say something, or did she just blink? He couldn't remember. Maybe she just smiled a little. He thought about the corners of her lips. The gas station was fading...

Worn-out tape, Mulder thought to himself. He brought a seed to his lips and his hand froze.

Worn-out tape...

Suddenly, a fantastic idea seized him.

He jumped off the bed, scattering seeds everywhere.

Worn-out tape!

He darted about the room his hands flying excitedly as he paced. He knew who Alice was! More specifically, he knew what she was. He knew what the condition was that she was ailing from. She wasn't an epileptic, she was-

Mulder exhaled heavily into his hands.

'Worn-out tape...' he muttered incredulously over and over.

Finally he whipped around. He had to tell Scully. He had to tell her right now! Barely controlling his excitement he slipped out into the hallway and knocked softly on her door. He waited a moment and knocked again. Tapping his foot impatiently, he knocked louder. Suddenly, a chill ran down his back. He dropped his hand to the doorknob and turned it. The door was unlocked. He opened it and peered inside.

His heart stopped.

The bed was empty. The bathroom light was on and the shower curtain was drawn. A towel lay on the floor. Scully's clothes and shoes were scattered by the bed. The window was open and the night July breeze blew softly into the silent room.

Cold beads of sweat broke out on Mulders neck. Grant's steel whisper echoed through his mind:

'I had never noticed how good you look in gold, Ms. Scully...'

Mulder let out a weird yell and stumbled back to his room. He threw on his clothes and grabbed the FBI-issued piece out of his suitcase. With his heart pounding madly, drenched in sweat, he ran out of the door.

* * *

><p>The manor gleamed in the soft moonlight, cold and pale. The trees rustled in hushed tones around it. Its oil black windows gaped, blankly reflecting the stars.<p>

Mulder ran up the porch and slammed himself against the mahogany doors. They were locked. He ran along the walls to the back of the manor. The living room windows were facing a small picturesque section of the garden. He grabbed a large rock and smashed the glass.

Inside, the house was deathly quiet. Panting heavily, Mulder struggled to collect his wits. He remembered Willy's story, and that the boy had said the living room wasn't the room with the door. It had the wrong wallpaper. Mulder darted into the hallway leading for the bathroom and ran down the carpet in the dark. He swung open a few rooms, but only the hallway had wallpaper. He stopped turning hopelessly.

And then he heard it - the same faint noise Willy described. He walked further and came to a semi-circular room lined with windows. There, to the left, between a large grandfather clock and an armoire displaying china, there was a sliver of light running along the wallpapered wall.

At first he didn't even understand what it was. It looked a glowing fishing line. When he got close, he realized it was a door that hadn't been shut all the way. The faint noise was coming from behind it. Drawing his gun, Mulder pushed the door. A narrow staircase was winding downward. He descended as stealthily as he could, gun held ready. The noise grew louder and louder. It sounded like a giant washing machine. The light grew brighter. Mulder finally saw the door. He inched along the wall, crouching, and peered in.

It wasn't really like a lab. There were no fizzling beakers or evil potions. There was a large square machine that was grunting loudly and steadily - the source of the noise and probably the reason Grant didn't hear his door being kicked or the shatter of the glass. The hunchback was standing by an enormous glass tank and examining a jar with a golden pigment.

'Blackstone!' Mulder shouted from the doorway, his gun direct on Grant.

The hunchback started and turned to fix a wide-eyed stare on the agent.

Mulder looked around the huge basement and saw Scully. She was lying naked on a table. Her eyes were closed, she wasn't moving. He let out a loud an agonized groan.

'She's not dead! She's not dead!' the hunchback cried quickly, his eyes fixed on the gun. He threw out his palms in a mitigating gesture. 'She's...sedated.'

'You sick bastard! You were planning to drown her in formaldehyde!'

Mulder swallowed violently, horrified by how narrowly they avoided disaster. Grant didn't answer. He was standing still as a statue, hands showing compliantly. Mulder walked closer.

'Alice,' he said after a moment, 'Alice is a clone isn't she?'

Grant scowled, but still didn't answer. Mulder paused, looking at him incredulously.

'If anyone was able to do that, it would definitely be you,' he went on, 'you resent nature; you've never accepted any of its laws as absolute.'

Grant shot him a sardonic look but said nothing.

'And when your wife was dying, you figured out how to clone her. Maybe it was your stem cell research, or maybe it was something specific to the nature of the tumor – I don't know, but you definitely did it.'

Mulder was growing excited. The idea felt a bit fantastic in the motel room, but here, in a secret basement, in the hands of a genius hunchback, it seemed obvious.

'Except it wasn't a perfect process,' he went on in a lowered voice. 'The clone would be your wife for a while, but soon enough complications would occur. How long did it take? How long did it take before they developed the spasms?'

Grant looked annoyed by the question. He glanced at the gun.

'It was always different,' he said finally, quietly, 'Sometimes almost a year would go by; other times - only a few weeks, and she would start to...'

'Wear out,' Mulder said with amazement. 'You told us that Alice was experiencing an episode, but that wasn't true. The clone was worn-out. And you already had her replacement prepared. You drowned the first Alice we met in formaldehyde - that's what the boy saw...'

Mulder stood mesmerized by the pieces and how they had fit.

The hunchback was looking at him intently. His eyes were burning, his mouth twisted maniacally. He started to shake.

'I love her,' he growled suddenly. 'You know what I mean, don't you Mr. Mulder?'

Mulder started. He had almost forgotten his situation. He cast a frantic gaze at the table where Scully lay. Scully...

Seeing Mulder look away, the hunchback reached back, pressed his hand against the wall and ducked. Suddenly, a dart flew out from somewhere behind them and lodged between Mulder's shoulder blades. He cried out in surprise and pulled the trigger instinctively. Grant was already beneath the bullet's path. With astounding athleticism he tackled Mulder, grabbing the gun out of his hands. Mulder couldn't fight back. Within a matter of seconds, all of his muscles were seizing up. As the hunchback jumped away, gun in hand, Mulder fell forward and slouched his body against the wall. That was all he managed before losing full control of his limbs.

Grant was laughing shrilly.

'My uncle lined this whole house with secret doors and booby-traps,' he explained chuckling. 'It was an odd passion of his. He started out finding ways to hide bootlegged liquor during Prohibition, and later on it just became a hobby.'

He was still chuckling happily. 'I have to say, I understand his delight in these things now. I pushed one tiny button and you went down like a chopped tree! It was hilarious!'

Mulder was breathing heavily. The edges of his vision were growing dark. He moaned something incoherent through lips he couldn't move. Grant leaned toward him and looked him over for a few moments.

'The poison isn't lethal,' he said after a while. 'It's a paralyzing agent, and will wear off in a couple of hours.' He paused. His eyes glinted maliciously.

'You know, Mr. Mulder, I knew right away that you and I had something in common. We both cared deeply for someone...madly even. And now,' he leaned closer to the agent. Grant's face was gripped by a horrid grimace. 'You and I are going to have another thing in common: the pain,' he whispered, 'of watching the one you love die without being able to do anything about it.'

Mulder let out a wild muffled scream and jerked spastically. He tried to move again and again without success. The hunchback watched him with a heinous grin. Suddenly, Mulder's eyes fell on the doorway. A white figure was emerging out of the darkness.

'...Grant,' came a soft melodious voice.

The hunchback paled and whirled about.

Alice was standing there. Her face, white as marble, gleamed against a frazzled storm of dark hair. Her eyes were wide and her whole body was trembling. Her dress was drenched in blood.

'Alice?…What happened,...?' he muttered in shock.

'I figured it out, Grant,' she said and a short spasm caught her left cheek. 'I figured out what the poem meant.'

'Poem?' he stammered, 'What poem?'

'It was a code,' she went on hazily, 'I planted it... so that I could find it.' Her eyes darted sideways and her head jerked backward. She struggled to regain her poise. She took a deep breath and looked back at the hunchback's face.

'It's all over, Grant,' she said solemnly, 'I love you, my angel, but it had to end. I'm sorry, it had to end.'

He was still stammering. His eyes were locked on the thin, blood stained body.

'What...Alice, what did you do?'

'I found it, Grant. I found the door.'

There was a long pause. The throbbing noise of the machine filled the space. Darkness was slowly growing over Mulder's vision as he struggled to stay conscious. Alice stood silent, her body convulsing occasionally. The blood on her dress glistened under the yellow light.

Suddenly Grant let out a pained cry of realization. He pushed past her and ran out of the doorway. The machine cut off at that moment, completing some kind of cycle. A bell dinged and the basement fell into ringing silence.

And then a monstrous shriek erupted from somewhere far beyond. It blared unnaturally, seeming to shake the walls of the entire manor.

Alice smiled and began to hum.

Unable to hold out any longer, Mulder slipped into the darkness.

* * *

><p>He awoke to being shaken at the shoulder. He pried his eyes open and slowly focused on the face leaning above him. It was Willy.<p>

'Mr. Mulder,' the boy whispered fearfully, 'Mr. Mulder, wake up! Wake up!'

Mulder groaned and forced himself to sit up. Every fiber of his body was sore and throbbing. He gaped at Willy in confusion. The boy was squatting by him with a relieved smile.

'Oh, thank God, you're not dead Mr. Mulder.'

Mulder blinked. His head was pounding; his legs tingled with a thousand pins and needles. He was trying to understand what was happening. Then he remembered.

'Scully!' his voice came out a barely audible croak. 'Where's Scully?'

Willy flushed crimson. 'She's on the table. She's starting to mutter and twitch. I think she'll wake up soon...She's got no clothes on, though,' he added sheepishly.

Mulder jumped onto his legs nearly falling sideways and plummeted toward the table.

Scully's small body was gleaming helplessly on the enormous wooden surface. He clasped her to him, showering her neck and shoulders with kisses. He held her like that for several moments before she came to and hollered, swatting him off. She jumped back looking around her in utter confusion. She looked back at Mulder, her frenzied eyes suddenly dawning with recognition. Then she noticed herself,

'Mulder,' she said in a mortified voice, 'why am I naked?'

Mulder picked up his gun, dropped by the hunchback, and the three left the empty basement and walked back up the stairs into the house. Scully was wearing a long white coat. They found a stack of them in a cupboard. Lab coats, Willy clarified.

Back in the hallway, the boy explained that he woke up around four a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep, so he wandered off to the grounds. When he spotted the broken window, he climbed right in and soon found the door Mulder had opened, the very same one he had uncovered the previous night. He went down and saw Mulder lying limp on the floor.

'Did you see Alice or the hunchback?' Mulder asked him. Willy shook his head.

They were standing in the living room.

'She said she found the door?' Scully asked after Mulder explained what had happened in the basement.

'Yes. She said she figured out what the poem meant and found the door.'

They stood in silence thoughtfully.

'The light at the end of that hall is on,' Willy said.

The agents turned and peered down the long gallery of paintings. He was right - a gleam of light could be seen at the end. They walked toward it.

They walked into the hunchback's display room. Cubes of formaldehyde were scattered all over the floor. Some had shattered and flowers and weird insects lay in puddles of spilled liquid. Dawn was breaking in the window and young rays of light flooded in, gleaming against different glass surfaces. One of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases was swung to the side like a door, exposing a stairwell. A golden light emanated from the distance below. All was silent.

The agents and Willy descended the stairs. They came to another display room. This one was a hallway, with a tall arched ceiling. Its stone walls were lined with large golden tanks containing different animals. There were foxes, bears, deer. Each one was suspended in a liquid tinted with gold.

'These must be animals he caught hunting,' Willy whispered with awe.

Mulder cringed, remembering the basement. He pulled Scully toward him and kissed her on the head. She blushed scarlet.

At the end of the hallway was a small wooden door. The boy pulled it open and they walked into another, similar gallery.

Willy gasped.

It held fifteen nine-foot tall tanks, each glowing with a pale blue light. They contained fifteen Alices. The beautiful bodies hung suspended; dark locks billowed languidly against skin gleaming like marble. As they passed one tank after another, the Alices greeted them with their somber smiles frozen in place. Their eyes still wandered: each figure had the same smile but the eyes were always looking somewhere different. One Alice had them rolled almost all the way back.

'Jesus...' Scully breathed out.

'I think they figured it out.' Mulder said in a quiet voice, 'Someone realized she wasn't the real Alice, and after that they were all desperately searching for an escape.'

Willy was pale-faced. He gaped at the clones and then at Mulder.

'I don't understand,' he mumbled, 'Where's the escape then?'

Mulder frowned uncertainly. Then his eyes fell on the door at the end of the hallway. They walked over to it. This one was tall and sleek, made of frosted glass. Willy paused, not sure he wanted to see another oddity, but appearing weak in front of federal agents appealed to him even less, so he grabbed the door and swung it open.

This was the laboratory.

An enormous round white room stood cluttered with desks, computers, books, beakers, and cumbersome high-tech medical equipment. Everything was turned off. The group walked forward, their steps echoing eerily. A tall pedestal towered at the center of the room. White steps ran around it in ascending rings. At the base of the stairs stood, what appeared to be several large capsules. The tops of the capsules hung open, revealing Alices in different stages of development. All were dead, the tubes having been ripped from their mouths and veins. Willy looked away. He was shaking and trying to hide it.

They climbed the white steps upward. On the top of the pedestal a body lay on a cot made of some sort of gel. She was hooked up to a throng of towering machines by an entanglement of tubes. A colossal and violent-looking apparatus settled about her head. She was shaven bald and strings of needle punctures marked her arms and legs.

Her neck had been severed cleanly from her body.

The oil-black crevice of the wound was stark and abrupt - a line of ink on a clean sheet of paper. Underneath the small elegant body, blood coated the gel surface. It had trickled down the metal frame of the cot and onto the white floor.

Willy staggered, gagging, and Scully turned to soothe him.

'It'll be ok, just don't stare at it too much,' she said softly. Embarrassed, but grateful, the boy glued his eyes to the black screen of one of the machines.

Scully and Mulder looked at each other.

'I think this is Alice Moya.' Mulder said with astonishment.

'I think you're right,' she answered breathlessly. 'The body that the people in Youngstown buried, it was-'

'-just another clone.' Mulder was excited; his dark eyes were scanning the scene. 'This must've been Grant's breakthrough. He placed her into an induced coma, and used her living body to create the clones. Maybe it was the way the tumor grew...a patch of cells he could harvest repeatedly-'

'Look!' Willy cried all of a sudden.

They had not noticed a figure slouching against the other side of the pedestal. It was an Alice. She was lying on the stairwell in a blood-drenched dress. A large knife lay several steps down. She had cut her arteries with two long slashes down each wrist and the blood had trickled almost to the base of the pyramid.

Mulder stared at her sorrowfully.

'That's her.' he said to Scully, 'That's the Alice that came to the basement.'

They stood, silently looking at the frail and beautiful body lying limp on the cold steps.

'I get it now,' Willy said suddenly with a hushed tone. 'Where the escape was, I mean. Ms. Alice Moya memorized a clue that would let her own brain remember what had happened. She knew that was the only way - Angel would never agree to just let her die.'

He looked at the agents emphatically.

'She was too pretty,' Willy explained.

* * *

><p>They exited the house and were met by a flood of sunlight rioting in the full-fledged dawn. A heavy scent of protocol hung in the morning air. As Scully dialed the bureau, Mulder reached over and brushed a lock from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. She blushed and glanced at him quickly, blue eyes shining.<p>

The bureau and UCLA ripped through the facts much quicker than the people of Youngstown. A squad team of medical experts arrived almost immediately. The house was cleared of all equipment and items valuable to genetic research. The FBI's case-file wrapped up quickly: it just needed a little extra paperwork. The geneticists weren't as lucky.

Despite having ransacked the house and confiscated everything they found, they were missing the crucial element. Every researcher keeps journals - records of his experiments. They had fifteen preserved clones, but no formula.

The hunchback was never found.

**The End.**

**Epilogue.**

The sun beamed. Its golden rays slinked throughout the estate's garden. A young couple was lounging under a pear tree. Their indistinct chatter could be heard from afar, sporadically interrupted by loud laughter echoing across the grounds.

An old woman burst out of two ornate doors and peered into the distance.

'Grant!' she called with a sharp authoritative voice, 'Grant, are you coming in?'

The hunchback winced at the sound and squinted against the glaring sun.

'I'm with my friend Alice, mother!' he hollered back.

The young girl by his side was leaning against the tree, chewing a pear with her eyes cast thoughtfully in the old woman's direction. Her long dark hair clung to the tree-bark and shone in beautiful tones of indigo under the sun.

The old woman in the distance turned to leave and then hesitated.

'Grant!' she yelled again, 'the university called. They wanted to know when you're coming back.'

He let out a loud annoyed groan, 'I'll call them back later, mother!'

He watched the small figure in the distance throw her arms up in frustration and disappear within the house.

The young girl looked over at Grant. 'Is she still mad about the raccoons?' she asked with a mouthful of fruit.

He chuckled. 'She'll get over it.'

He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sun. The girl watched him quietly. The blond hair, flung about his large hump, was rustling softly in the breeze. His face was smooth and angular. He was smiling slightly.

'Grant,' she said suddenly and softly.

He blinked and looked down toward her.

'I think I'm in love with you.' she whispered. A feverish rosy hue downed her paled cheekbones.

The hunchback drew a sharp breath and swallowed.

'Well, I've been in love with you since the first day I met you, Alice.'

The golden sunlight gushed like a tidal wave, yet a gentle breeze lingered. Alice and Grant squinted into each other's eyes.

She smiled,

'Then let's be together forever.'


End file.
